Key moment for North Yorkshire's new £250m-saving waste plant

Graham Chalmers

Construction work on a new waste facility near Knaresborough designed to save £250m in council finances has reached a key milestone with the installation of the tallest part of the facility.

A 70-metre high steel stack is in place at Allerton Waste Recovery Park following a two-week installation programme.

A joint project between North Yorkshire County Council, City of York Council and waste management company Amey, when completed The facility near Knaresborough will divert waste from landfill and instead use it to generate energy.

When operational, it will reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill to less than 10 per cent of that collected, enabling North Yorkshire and York to exceed their targets of recycling 50 per cent of waste by 2020.

It is estimated the finished facility will save £250m on household waste treatment costs for the two councils over the 25-year life of the contract.

The stack is 4m in diameter and houses two flues for each boiler line and weighs approximately 136 tonnes.

The sections were constructed by a specialist manufacturer in Denmark prior to being transported to Allerton Waste Recovery Park near Knaresborough and craned into place.

When operational the facility will bring together three state-of-the-art technologies – Mechanical Treatment, Anaerobic Digestion and Energy from Waste.

It will treat ‘black bin’ waste collected from homes in North Yorkshire and the City of York.

Together, the technologies will increase the amount of recyclable materials which are removed from the waste, in turn cutting the amount of rubbish sent to landfill by 90%.

Some of the electricity created will be used at Allerton Waste Recovery Park but the majority will be exported to the National Grid, the equivalent of 40,000 homes each year.

Ian Fielding, Assistant Director, Waste Management, Waste and Countryside Services from North Yorkshire County Council added: “I am very impressed with the good progress being made at the waste recovery park and that we’re on schedule to see it open in early 2018 when it will begin to make a real difference to the way we process waste.”

Mark James, Head of Construction from Amey, which will also manage the facility on behalf of the councils, said: “This facility is really coming together. The stack allows energy to be created by burning waste at a minimum of 850C, with the combustion process creating steam which in turn powers turbines to create electricity.”